The following relates to the printing and marking arts. It finds particular application in conjunction with quality control of printing systems with multiple marking engines (ME), and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it should be appreciated that some embodiments are amenable to other applications.
Conventional printing systems can include multiple printers, multiple media paths, and one or multiple destinations. A single scheduler can link two or more of the multiple printers. However, in many instances if one digital front end (DFE) sends the same cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK) values to each of a plurality of the multiple printers, even to printers of the same class, for example N printers of the same model number, e.g., Xerox 7750's, substantially identical color will not be achieved by the plurality of the multiple printers. These differences are due to a difference in typical color value achieved, non-uniformities in the individual engines, and other factors. There are various reasons for the non-uniformities. For example, the printers may have differences in absolute maximum densities or there may be differences in the inboard-to-outboard behavior of the machines. The printers may have scratches on the photoreceptors, or aged parts that cause variations. These problems may lead to a presence of streaks, differences in density achieved along the in-board to outboard direction of the print engines and other non-uniformities. Despite this, image uniformity is a desired goal, and it is highly desirable for the final images to be uniform regardless of the printer used to process any individual page of the print job. And, any given printer may or may not be available when the job or any portion of the job is actually printed.
In view of the above, there is a need in the industry to deliver prints that are substantially identical, regardless of the printers used to process the print job. In addition, there is a need for a system that can interact with a scheduler that has the freedom to assign any given page of a job to any appropriate printer within the printing system. Further, there is a need in the industry for a system that is capable of interacting with a DFE that does not have to know which printer will be processing, at any given time, any given page of the job. Moreover, there is a need in the industry for a system and method that will provide improved compensation of image imperfections.